Editorial

911 costs

It's not exactly news that telephone use in the United States is in a state of transition. One in four people between the ages of 18 and 24 exclusively use cell phones. The percentage goes up to 29 percent for people age 25 to 29. Older people are still hanging onto their landlines, but overall 12 percent of Americans have only cell phones, and their numbers increased by 2 percent just in the past half-year.

One repercussion of this growth in cell phone dependence is how 911 emergency service is delivered. Another raises questions about how to pay for that service.

The global positioning system technology exists to track cell phones in many areas of the country as accurately as a landline call can be traced. But this technology is expensive. At this point

A recent survey rated Missouri's emergency service coverage among the worst in the country in locating a caller's location. Twenty percent of the counties in the state lack a completely reliable system for tracking landline calls. Bollinger County is one of those but is in the process of upgrading its system.

Cape Girardeau currently is among the Missouri counties that can't track the location of a 911 cell phone call. The county also is about to spend $2 million to make that upgrade.

An 8 percent tax on landline phone bills pays for the state's 911 system. As landline use declines and cell phone use increases, lawmakers will, no doubt, think about taxing cell phones so they can be tracked by the 911 system.

If they are to be taxed, cell phone users should expect the same high level of service the landline system has provided.

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